


Running

by tridecaphilia



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen, Implied Relationships, Mostly Gen, Post Episode: s04e17-e18 The End of Time, liberties taken with the timeline, mid-regeneration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 12:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/836921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tridecaphilia/pseuds/tridecaphilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If anything came close to dream-building, it was flying through space and time with Ariadne and a two-hearted alien called the Doctor. Set after the Doctor takes in the radiation and before he regenerates. Inception-wise, set in a world where Cobb didn't wake up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted on LiveJournal under the same username. I challenged myself to write five different Inception crossovers in under 1000 words each. The others will probably be posted here as well.

Arthur had been right when he said there was nothing like creating a dream. But if anything came close, it was flying through space and time, in a blue box that was bigger on the inside than the outside, with Ariadne and a two-hearted alien called the Doctor.

Eames would say that they looked like a married couple if he saw them now, after only a few months of traveling through time—or a few centuries, depending how you looked at it. Maybe he’d be extra generous and make it a married trio. Whatever he said, it would only be after he reached for his totem, and probably after he made Arthur and Ariadne check theirs as well. Arthur wouldn’t blame him. It had taken him weeks of traveling, checking his totem several times an hour, before he believed it was real, and even now he had his doubts. It was the little things, like Ariadne’s laugh, or her hand on his, or the way she too reached for her totem every time the TARDIS doors opened—

All right. So the only reason he thought it was real was because he _had_ to believe that Ariadne was real and awake and traveling with him.

They’d fled. It was the truth, though it wasn’t pretty. Cobb had vanished when they got to America, never reaching his kids, and less than a month later this bespectacled Doctor had offered them the chance to run, farther than anyone could catch them. He was running as well, he said. From what, he wouldn’t say; but the TARDIS told them some, on the screens when the Doctor wasn’t looking, and with that and what the Doctor let slip about his species, it wasn’t hard to work out the rest.

Part of Arthur had hoped that when someone finally tracked down the number for the phone he’d brought, that the Doctor had given “universal roaming”, that it would be Dom, back from wherever he’d been. But when he answered the unlisted number, it was Eames on the other end.

“Did you find him?” Arthur asked. He could see Ariadne turning towards him from the Doctor.

“Yes, no thanks to you. This would have gone a lot faster if you two hadn’t vanished off the face of the bloody planet. Where are you, anyway? I had a devil of a time just tracking down this number.”

“We’ve been…” Arthur’s gaze flicked to the TARDIS control panel, “traveling.”

“Traveling? Wow, you really wanted him back, didn’t you?”

Arthur flinched. Of course he wanted Cobb back. But first he hadn’t believed it was real, and then he had to believe they could get back in time to save him. But if he tried explaining that to Eames, all their totems combined wouldn’t convince the forger he was awake.

He changed the subject. “Where is he? Are you going to get him out?”

“Saito played with a loophole,” Eames said. “Cobb’s in America, in a dream where he’s home.* I’ve found his body; we can get in, wake him up, get him out. As for _will_ I, will I have your help this time?”

Arthur met Ariadne’s eyes. “Of course,” he said. She nodded, though the conversation didn’t carry that far. “Just say where and when.”

Eames named the meeting place and Arthur hung up the phone.

Ariadne turned back to the Doctor. “We can stay with you. Until you regenerate.”

The Doctor didn’t look surprised they’d figured it out, merely resigned; but he shook his head. “No.”

She reached out to him. “We—”

He pulled away and started fiddling with the TARDIS controls. “Regeneration is never clean and it’s never pretty. This time will be worse.”

“Why?”

He met her eyes; his were haunted. “Because I’ve been running from it—fighting it. And because it’s from radiation. Expelling all that energy… it might destroy the TARDIS.” Ariadne looked alarmed. The Doctor shook his head and patted the console. “She’ll heal. But it won’t be safe for anyone else around. So I’ll get you to your meeting with the Gambler—”

“Eames,” Arthur said.

“Yes, him,” the Doctor agree, as the TARDIS started whirring. Arthur and Ariadne grabbed on to the console just in time to avoid getting thrown to the floor.

“He’s a forger!” Arthur shouted over the noise.

“Suppose he is!” the Doctor agreed.

“So why did you call him—?”

“ _Right_ then,” the Doctor said as the TARDIS stopped whirring and settled down. “Here we are. No questions, no goodbyes. I’m not in the mood for either. Just go.”

Arthur reluctantly obeyed, still suspicious. Ariadne followed, but stopped in the doorway and turned back. “Doctor?”

He looked up from the console. “Hm?”

“Thank you.”

He smiled. “Ariadne, the dream-builder. Do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Don’t stop running.”

The door closed, the now-familiar _whooshing_ started, and the Doctor and his blue box vanished.


End file.
